Little Footsteps in the Big World

A few days ago I read an article on the Huffington Post of a father from China who decided to travel solo with his two-year-old to Taiwan for a week, leaving the mom home. Not only they had tons of fun (he claimed that it was one of the best trips in his life), but also they had their relationship redefined, in a very good way. He learned a lot of new things he never knew about the child, but also about himself as a dad. He shared his knowledge and experience by showing her the world himself. The bonus, they gave the mom a well deserved "break" from them for a week. My husband and our toddler on a wooden boat, sailing back from Sempu Island in Malang, East Java I told my husband the story and he seemed challenged. He said he would do it, but he's not too sure if he can do it just yet. Don't get me wrong, my husband is a super dad. He changes the kids' diapers more than I do (we cloth diaper, mind you), he babywears both kids, he goes to the movies with our ...

Some people are not affected by jet-lag at all, no matter how many time-zones and how many oceans they just passed by. I'm one of those who are severely affected by jet-lag. And so are my children. In this trip to Indonesia , we went from GMT+2 (Zagreb) to GMT+7 (Jakarta). After 30 hours of flights and layovers, we arrived in Batu, East Java, at around 11pm local time, meaning 6pm in the place of origin (Zagreb). Yup, you guessed it right, the kids were wide awake until 3am when they're finally sleepy enough for bed, so, 10pm Zagreb time, basically, the regular time they go to bed (yes, they go to bed that late, go ahead and judge me). And that means, they would wake up only around 1pm local time, around 8am Zagreb time. Due to jet-lag we'd start the day quite late, and "lose" half of the day My toddler would nap naturally around 6pm local time because that's 1pm home time, and would sleep until 9pm when she's fresh again after "afternoon...

This trip was nothing but boring. But then again, with us it's always about lots of surprises. The day we traveled to Indonesia (about the trip here ) was the day the new Zagreb airport was opened for the first time for public. We expected chaos, confused staff, bad organization and surprises. Our flight was at 6:30pm and my husband had to work until 3:30pm, then he took a cab from work to home, picked us all home and we went with the same cab to the airport. That also means that I, being with the kids, had to pack everything by myself and get the three of us ready for the cab. We were the first customers our cab driver drove to the new airport. Testing the brand new Zagreb airport It was already almost 5pm when we finally got to the airport, we unloaded all of the suitcases, husband got us a trolley and arranged everything, I got the kids. We paid the cab and the cab left. We strolled toward the departure area, looking for our check-in desk and finally approached the ...

In a few weeks we'll be flying to Indonesia so my parents see their new grandchild. We haven't traveled with two kids yet, but I don't think two adults traveling with two kids is a big deal. However, my husband will be coming back home by himself earlier, and I'll be staying with the girls a little longer, and finally, coming back home alone with them. The first leg of the flight would be around an hour, then two or three hours of layover, then a second leg of flight of around twelve hours, another layover of about two hours, and the last leg of the flight of around five hours. At the time the toddler will be three-year-old and our newborn four-month-old. Can't really give any tips since I haven't done it myself, but I kind of have idea how I would do it. Kind of. Our toddler in Treviso airport, when traveling to Paris I think I'd do stroller Normally I prefer babywearing (my thoughts about that is in this post ), but that would be when I travel s...